Best Birthday Present Ever

Score!

The closing was this past Wednesday and, thank goodness, it went smoothly. In fact, it seemed like the whole world was smiling with us that day. The weather was gorgeous, the trees rolling by the train window were hypnotic in their numbers and unrelenting greenery, and as we headed from the train station to our prospective new place for the final walk-through, getting a good look at our new neighborhood in all its springlike glory, I couldn't help but think of the Talking Heads song, "Once in a Lifetime" -- particularly the line, "How did I get here???" It was too lovely to be believed, like something out of a movie. And then, right on cue as we were examining the outside of the house, a sweet little old lady (a great-grandmother, in fact) who lives across the street came over to greet us, saying how nice it was to have a young couple moving in. She offered us the use of any tools we might need (she and her husband have quite an impressive arsenal), and let us know that everyone looks out for each other there.

The walk-through went fine (whew!) -- nothing looked amiss. We discovered that the sellers even left us their gas grill, which was a big bonus, as well as cans of paint matching what was on the walls, spare sheet rock, and spare downspout material. We met up with my mom for lunch afterwards, and she was really excited for us. After lunch we went and signed our lives away. It was interesting meeting our attorney in person -- he was nice enough, and to his credit, provided very concise explanations of everything we were signing. According to our realtor, it was the smallest stack of closing paperwork she'd ever seen, and she found him very efficient. (The only problem was that he forgot to make copies of our photo IDs so we had to e-mail them to him the next day, he forgot to explicitly state that my hubby and I were married on the official deed he was going to send in to get the proper title insurance so he had to hand-write that in the next morning, and he forgot to include proof of homeowner's insurance in our take-home stack of closing paperwork so he had to fax it to me the next day. He also would have completely forgotten to ask the sellers to provide us with the original DEP certificatiion paperwork if our realtor hadn't reminded us a couple of days before. So, my impression of him being somewhat of a space cadet still stands.)

The sellers also had a couple of contractors in the house doing some last-minute corrections to get it 100% up to code (namely installing a railing in the basement and fireproofing the basement ceiling), but we've been assured it will be wrapped up by the end of the week (though we are holding some of the sellers' $$ in escrow until we confirm it's complete -- urgh, there's always one more thing).

It was a wonderful moment when the sellers' attorney slid the keys in an envelope across the table to us -- it was all official!!! We were actual homeowners now!!! We could hardly believe it was real. We went back to Calaloo Cafe, where we'd gone for lunch, to celebrate by having some dessert, which we hadn't had time for before. My hubby and I decided that on May 21st of every year we live in this house, it will be Closing Day, which we will observe by either creating or procuring a gingerbread house topped with candles numbering however many years we'd been living there. Maybe we'll even write "Happy Closing Day" on top in lemon icing.

A couple of days later, our loan officer was thoughtful enough to call and ask how everything went, and to wish us well. It was so sweet of her! She's been really great to work with -- warm, friendly, upfront, and extremely responsive -- and we get along so well. We may even get together socially sometime this summer and go to the Museum of Natural History, since our loan will be flipped to another company by then.

Our luck with this whole thing is just astonishing. Granted, it was BRUTAL every single step of the way to this point, but totally worth it:

* The news of the previous buyer starting to back out of the contract on the place we chose came first thing in the morning on my birthday. While of course I didn't know how it would all turn out, it almost seemed like fate. I mean, what were the odds of us having a second shot at the place after it had already been claimed AND finding out about it on my birthday???

* While the loan industry is in a total panic and slashing niceties such as lender-paid MI with only 5% down, what were the odds of us getting it anyway, as we did??? We were able to pay for the entire down payment and closing costs completely on our own, with no help from my family.

* Just out of morbid curiosity, I've been doing MLS searches for houses in Morris Plains each week for the past several weeks to see if any new listings come up in our price range -- they don't. Not even one, as everything else is priced significantly higher. In a region of the country -- and a neighborhood -- where real estate prices are so inflated and are barely affected by the general market downturn, what were the odds that we would get the one and only great place within our budget???

* In a small area with fairly average lot sizes, what were the odds of us getting a larger lot on a corner???

* In an area where most houses date back to the '50s, what were the odds of scoring a place with a roof only 6 years old, a recently remodeled kitchen and basement, and brand-new windows in every room???

* My hubby's boss actually told him recently that Morris Plains had been his first choice of locale when choosing a town for his family to settle in, but that it didn't work out because he couldn't find a house that was walking distance from the train (the parking lot is too crowded to conceive of driving and leaving one's car there). With a town of only 6,500 people and very little housing inventory to begin with, and property walking distance from the Midtown Direct train to New York at a premium price, what were the odds that we could find such a stellar location AND afford it???

* One interesting factoid I didn't hear about until after we'd already committed to the house was that the very first Arabian horses ever to set foot on American soil were first brought to Morris Plains. I am a horse fanatic, and I love Arabians especially, but had no idea. What were the odds of one of my favorite horse breeds starting its U.S. migration in my newly adopted town, with no prior knowledge on my part beforehand???

We have been truly blessed. My hubby and I keep advising each other to be extremely careful because we've probably burned up most of our allotment of luck for the next while in one fell swoop.

I can't wait to have breakfast in the dining room with the sun streaming in through the sliding glass door.
I can't wait to be able to wander outside at any time of day or night and know I'll be safe.
I can't wait to check books out of the local library, which is only a short walk away.
I can't wait to grill outside in the coming summer months, maybe even right in time for July 4th.
I can't wait to be able to hear crickets during dinner while the weather is warm.
I can't wait to see all the trees in the yard and the neighborhood ablaze in color when fall hits.
I can't wait to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
I can't wait to gaze out the front window from the couch while it's snowing and sip hot chocolate.
I can't wait to put up our very own Christmas tree and stockings and decorations -- and perhaps exterior lights -- for the first time.
I can't wait to see all the flowering shrubs burst into bloom during spring, with a halo of pink petals surrounding the front tree.
I can't wait to have a dog (or two) in our large, fenced-in backyard.
I can't wait to be able to watch TV/movies and listen to/perform music at whatever volume I want.
I can't wait to be able to travel only 10-15 minutes to reach a bustling nexus of entertainment, dining, and shopping options.
I can't wait to see deer (and maybe even bears, which have reputedly been sighted) in the immediate vicinity.
I can't wait to meet the neighbors in our new "Community of Caring," as Morris Plains calls itself.
I can't wait to see clusters of trees out the train window during my leisurely commute to and from work. Hooray for our "Little House in the Big Woods," to quote Laura Ingalls Wilder.

As a long-time urban dweller, I have been totally starved for these things.

HOLY COW I AM OVER THE FREAKIN' MOON. I feel like we're going to the Promised Land.

And so concludes one adventure as another begins. On to preparing and packing...and the rest of our lives!

Closing In

Well, there's good news and bad news to report as our closing date draws near, only 5 days away.

The bad news:

It is so AGGRAVATING to be unable to trust *anyone* who works for you not to goof up in a huge way. We've had two near-misses that could have resulted in us getting seriously financially screwed due to negligence and carelessness:

* In the final Good Faith Estimate, Truth in Lending, and Commitment Letter that our loan officer and underwriter prepared for us, there were several errors, the worst of which was that -- despite being locked in at an interest rate of 6% the previous week -- all the paperwork showed the interest rate as NOT LOCKED and at 6.25%!!! I just about had a heart attack, and we had to get our loan officer and underwriter to send us corrected versions of the paperwork not once, but TWICE before it was completely accurate. Couldn't they have just been more careful about it the first time and spared us all the trouble???

* Our attorney has been consistently difficult to communicate with and obtain information from -- he never answers his phone directly, leaving that to a receptionist who adds no value whatsoever beyond automated voicemail apart from indicating that he is on the phone or providing rough estimates as to when he might get back to the office. He tends not to return phone calls for hours, sometimes even an entire day, often necessitating a second call to convey urgency (which even then sometimes needs to be supplemented with an e-mail), and we keep having to remind him over and over to copy us on the correspondence he exchanges with the sellers' attorney (something that should be fairly basic, we would think). In short, getting anything out of him requires a massive expenditure of time and effort on our end. At one point, there had been some confusion over where to send our down payment, and I ended up calling the sellers' attorney directly to resolve the issue because ours was, as usual, unavailable to speak with us. What a contrast the office of the sellers' attorney provided! His assistant was completely up to speed on our case, and was able to furnish the information we needed right away. We also noticed that all his correspondence -- which is consistently professional and courteous -- automatically CCs the sellers, versus the correspondence from our attorney which CCs only the realtors (and even then, we had to remind him to include them). He also tends to just add handwritten replies to what the sellers' attorney sends, rather than creating a new letter. Next time, we're hiring the sellers' attorney! Funny the things you learn. Our attorney's one redeeming feature apart from a pleasant personality is that he does tend to give good legal advice. There have been about three instances in which we weren't aware of protections we had and measures we could take to retain them that he brought us up to speed on, for which we were grateful. But one big oversight on his part was that he almost forgot to close the loop on the specific dollar amount we would be getting for the radon remediation credit -- that discussion had been postponed until the inspection phase, and when the inspection phase ended, he was just about ready to declare everything wrapped up before I reminded him that the dollar figure was still outstanding. He said he had thought it was settled during attorney review, which it clearly wasn't. He's somewhat of an absent-minded professor type. Couldn't he have just taken an extra few minutes to look at our file???

The good news:

* Despite the recent concerns of our loan officer and underwriter, we were in the end able to get our lender-paid MI at the originally promised down payment rate of 5%. WOOHOO!!! This obviously makes a *huge* difference, since having to put down 10% would have required twice as much upfront cash.

* The appraiser's report confirmed that we were buying the house at below market value, even with said market value being somewhat depressed relative to what it would have been 6 months to a year ago. It was really gratifying to see that the offer price we had clung to based on pure gut instinct in the absence of any decent comps, despite all the pressure, ended up being just the right amount to be getting an unequivocally good deal on the property, versus coming in close enough that there could have been a chance of slightly overpaying.

* When presented with our inspection report, the sellers agreed to offer us a credit of $500 towards repairs in addition to (after we reminded our attorney to follow up) the full amount of the figure we requested for radon remediation. This was a pleasant surprise because technically, apart from the radon issue, none of the concerns the report raised were strictly the sellers' responsibility and they could have gotten away with offering us $0. We had also expected that they might quibble with the radon estimate because $250 of it was contingent on closer examination of the electrical wiring, and may or may not be necessary to pay. But they didn't.

So, now it's just a matter of getting details of the where and when of our closing from our near-absentee attorney, doing a final walk-through of the property, and making arrangements to acquire all the necessary contractors, housewares, and transportation to take us through the next couple of weeks. Forward ho!

Dramamine, Anyone?

This past month has been so full of twists and turns that it's enough to make one motion-sick.

I decided to take the week after my birthday off from work just to regroup and relax and regain a bit of strength after all the stress of the preceding time. I really looked forward to the brief reprieve from house-hunting, and from my myriad obligations and responsibilities in general. I made sure to get as much of that stuff knocked out in advance so that it wouldn't be hanging over my head during vacation. My biggest priority was to focus on doing things I enjoyed but barely ever had time for, or on doing very little in general -- whichever seemed like it would be more nurturing in any given moment. I would play it by ear.

Almost immediately after I got out of bed the morning of my birthday, the phone rang. It was our realtor. She said it appeared that the buyer who had recently out-bid us on the house we liked was starting to get cold feet, and was annoying the sellers with her hemming and hawing. The particular bone of contention that the buyer was latching onto was the fact that during inspection, the house had tested at a slightly elevated level of radon -- a reading of 4.8, versus the EPA's acceptable maximum of 4 (interestingly, we later found out that the European Union's is 5). The seller had offered to take full financial responsibility for radon remediation, but the buyer was stalling the process. The seller's agent had called our agent asking if we were still interested, and suggested that we renew our offer if we were.

So many emotions seized me all at once. On one hand, I was ecstatic -- an unexpected second chance at a great house, wow! On the other, I was daunted -- what the heck *is* radon, anyway, and would it be just as problematic for *us*? And mixed in with all of that, I was irritated -- these sellers had played us off against this buyer before, and once again, they were manipulating us in pursuit of the most convenient outcome for them. Even if the radon could be satisfactorily dealt with, would all the effort we put into resubmitting a written offer serve only as a means of applying pressure to the current buyer and putting that deal right back on track, with no gain whatsoever for us? And if the sellers were sneaking around behind this buyer's back in search of potentially greater expediency, might they do exactly the same thing to us if we shifted into the buyer's position?

The fact of the matter was that they still had the upper hand and we still hadn't found anything suitable in the intervening time since we last dealt with them. And the clock was ticking.

The first step was to find out exactly what radon was all about and what was involved in getting rid of it. I called back our realtor and said we'd need the weekend to think about it, and also asked her for the name and number of a radon remediation firm so that we could consult them with questions, which she provided.

I woke up my hubby, explained the situation, and we immediately got busy finding out everythng we could online about radon, leaning primarily on the EPA's web site, until my parents came to pick us up for a family get-together a few hours later (we had called them to update them as well). My hubby had also been a nuclear engineer in the Navy several years back, so he already knew a little about it.

The upshot of it was this: radon is an invisible, odorless, naturally occuring gas that results from a high concentrations of uranium in the soil -- it is particularly prevalent in older homes and mountainous areas, but it can be found everywhere (apparently 1 in 5 homes throughout the U.S. has a radon issue). It seeps into a house through the basement, and extended exposure to it at levels higher than 4 can potentially cause lung cancer. The stuff is bad mojo and definitely something you do not want lingering about under any circumstances. HOWEVER, radon remediation is not particularly complicated and can result in almost complete elimination of the problem, as opposed to merely bringing it below a reading of 4. While we could see how the presence of radon might freak out a potential buyer, we weren't particularly worried about it, armed with the knowledge of how it could be effectively dealt with. However, the question was whether the problem would, in fact, be ours to deal with, or whether the current buyer would come to her senses and follow through.

The following day was taken up with errands and domestic stuff in general, so it wasn't until Monday, the first day of my vacation, that we could proceed any further. I got up early that morning and called the radon remediation firm with lots of questions that my hubby and I had formulated. They articulately and patiently addressed all of them, basically confirming our findings over the weekend and fleshing them out a bit more. The strategy we agreed on with my parents was to tell our realtor to tell the sellers' realtor that we would consider renewing our offer, but only once the current buyer was out of the picture. We wanted to make it clear that we were interested, but were not willing to be manipulated.

I called our realtor to convey these thoughts, and she said she'd heard nothing further from the sellers' agent -- she thought that perhaps it was a sign that the current buyer had decided to proceed after all.

In the meantime, I ran a bunch more errands that were still outstanding, and also called our loan officer to see if Morris Plains was still listed as being in a declining market and therefore still required a 10% down payment to avoid PMI -- it had been awhile since we'd last talked about it, and I hoped that things might have changed in the intervening time. She called me back to say that it looked like we might be able to get away with 5% after all, but that she couldn't know for sure until we were under contract on the house, the loan could be run through their automated underwriting system, and the property could be appraised.

Shortly after that conversation, our realtor called back. Apparently the buyer had terminated the contract and was now officially out of the picture. The coast was clear for us to make an offer! We decided that doing so verbally, as opposed to through a formal contract, would be the best way to start since we'd already been through this song and dance before and the sellers had come to us this time. If they accepted, we would then draw up the contract. Even though our previous offer price was clearly understood by the sellers as our "best and final," the sellers' agent said that if we could just go up $5,000 higher, we could get the ball rolling right away. Even our realtor encouraged us to make a higher offer if we could, which disappointed me because she was supposed to be representing *our* interests, not the sellers' -- her desire to maximize her commission finally came to the forefront. They all knew perfectly well that if anything, we might offer *less* because of the recently disclosed radon issue rather than more. We resisted this attempt at yet more manipulation by both parties and stuck with our original figure -- our realtor's disappointment was readily apparent but she feigned acceptance. However, we moved up our closing date to be a week earlier since we knew they would appreciate the ability to close more quickly, and we felt pretty sure we could swing it.

I grabbed some lunch, then got another call from our realtor -- the sellers' agent was now bringing a whole new issue onto the scene. Apparently another reason why the deal with the former buyer had fallen through was because her attorney had demanded that the abandoned underground oil tank, which had been properly cleaned, filled, capped, and certified by the Department of Environmental Protection (something we'd already known about from the seller's disclosure), be entirely removed. This was a huge and totally unnecessary production, and the sellers had understandably refused to do it. Before considering our verbally relayed offer terms any further, they wanted us to provide a written statement from our attorney essentially promising that we wouldn't hassle them about it, pending his review of their DEP certification paperwork. Talk about having to jump through hoops! Our realtor asked us for our attorney's phone and fax number so that she could give it to the sellers' agent and he could fax over the DEP certification paperwork. While she acknowledged that the sellers' latest request was a bit unorthodox, she didn't say anything like, "You might want to think about whether this is something you're comfortable with, and to discuss it with your attorney to see what his thoughts are about this kind of approach. If this request seems reasonable, we'll need his phone and fax number." I mean, there wasn't even a written offer on the table yet, for heaven's sake! We had no assurance whatsoever that even if we went through all of this, our offer would be accepted. The transaction would literally commence with us signing away at least one of our rights, albeit a right we were highly unlikely to exercise. Our realtor's true colors were emerging. When the sellers' team said "Jump," she said, "How high?" Some buyer's agent she was! I told her that I would first like to speak with our attorney about it before giving his information to anyone, and that we weren't prepared to just automatically agree to these conditions on the spot. Furthermore, I wanted her to get some assurance from the sellers' agent that if we agreed to send them the statement from our attorney that they wanted, we would be clear to proceed with a formal written offer at our original price that they would accept. Shortly thereafter, the sellers' agent faxed me the DEP certification paperwork for the abandoned oil tank, but made no further comment.

I placed a call to our attorney. When I explained to his secretary who I was and why I was calling, she said, "I'm sorry, he's out on vacation all this week."

OH NOOOOOO! No no no! I knew there was no way on earth that these sellers were going to wait around all week for us. Might we have to line up another attorney? There was nobody covering for him. Our loan officer was the one who had recommended him, so I tried the cell number she had given me, figuring that this was a legitimate emergency. "The number you dialed has been disconnected," the automated message from the phone company said. GREAT! I called our loan officer to see if she had a more recent number from him. She didn't. What was I to do? I called back his office explaining that this was an emergency, and supplying the cell number I'd tried. The secretary said that she expected him to check in that afternoon and would deliver our message at that time, but didn't release his current cell number.

So, all I could do was wait. I went outside in the bright sunshine to try to clear my head and relax a bit, but my back was knotted to hell and gone and was in pain every step of the way. And I just couldn't fully take in my surroundings, lovely and springlike though they were.

After I returned home, our attorney's secretary called back to say that he would call around 9:00 a.m. the following morning to discuss our situation. So much for sleeping in.

The next morning, I got up bright and early once again, waiting for his call. I found an e-mail from our realtor making a not-so-subtle attempt to once again pressure us into increasing our offer amount, sending along a few listings less favorable than ours with exorbitant asking prices. She knew as well as we did that asking prices mean nothing and that it's the final sales prices that matter, but she hadn't been able to supply us with meaningful comps due to an alleged lack of inventory, forcing us to rely entirely on instinct. This desperate tactic was a new low and served only to make me even more annoyed with her.

Then I got a call from our attorney's secretary saying that she had been mistaken when she told me he'd call back around 9:00 a.m. -- she'd meant around 9:00 a.m. West coast time. Oh, for Pete's sake!

I attended to some e-mail I'd been neglecting over the past few days, and finally our attorney called. I gave him the low-down, and he saw no problem with providing the letter they wanted, assuming that the DEP paperwork checked out. He stipulated that since he was on vacation, it could take up to 48 hours, but he promised to attend to it as soon as he could. He gave me his new cell phone number and his e-mail address, and also requested that the sellers' agent provide us with contact information for the sellers' attorney so that he could reach out to him and introduce himself, and discuss the issues in more detail. I e-mailed him the DEP certification paperwork and called back our loan officer to give her his current cell phone number.

In the meantime, I received another e-mail from our realtor -- this one said that her mother had lost her struggle with cancer and passed away 4 days earlier, and so her availability over the next two days would be very limited. Why hadn't she mentioned anything about it sooner??? That was huge! I was surprised she had even continued to work since then under the circumstances. I found it all very strange, though of course my heart went out to her and I completely understood why her availability would be limited.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and call the sellers' agent directly. I told him I'd received the paperwork he'd faxed us, that I'd spoken with our attorney and he initially foresaw no problem with providing the requested letter (pending his review of the paperwork), and that our attorney would like contact information for the sellers' attorney, and to please call me back with it.

We didn't hear a peep from anyone for the rest of that day.

I took the next day to sleep in a bit and to try to have some semblance of a vacation, leaving my hubby's work number on our attorney's voicemail and e-mail and getting out of the neighborhood entirely. I also left my hubby with some followup questions to ask him should he call. It was a welcome and much-needed break. It turned out that nobody called that day anyway.

Not knowing who we might or might not hear from the day after that, I once again left my hubby's work number on our attorney's voicemail and e-mail before taking off for more out-of-neighborhood activities. I checked in with my hubby via cell phone later that afternoon, and it turned out that our attorney had finally called him. He said that the paperwork looked fine, that everything checked out, and that the letter would be sent to the sellers' agent that day or the next.

I had my hubby call our realtor and relay the news. The sellers' side had still refused to give us any kind of assurance that an offer from us would be accepted even with the letter imminent, and had not provided the contact information for their attorney. Essentially, they were completely ignoring us. On the other hand, after having come this far, we had nothing to lose by submitting a written offer -- except maybe our sanity, which was starting to erode anyway. :-) We gave our realtor the green light to draw up the offer contract. We weren't sure what percentage our down payment would have to be, but we put 5% on the offer contract to keep expectations low. If we subsequently needed to put 10% down after all, we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. My hubby received the completed contract that evening just before we met up for dinner, and we signed it and faxed it back to her once we got home.

Late the following morning, I called our attorney's office to verify that the letter he had promised to send was in fact sent. It turned out that it was, the previous day. So that was a relief. We had done everything we possibly could from our end. I left the neighborhood once again, this time to meet a friend for lunch, and dropped by my hubby's office for a surprise visit since I was right in the area. Though it was of course nice to see him, I was in for an unfortunate surprise when I got there.

It turned out that our faxing software had malfunctioned and our realtor never received our signed contract, now well into mid-afternoon on a Friday. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I rushed home, retrieved the file from my hubby's desktop, and attached it in an e-mail to our realtor, hoping she would be able to retrieve it and present it to the seller before the close of the business day, which was rapidly approaching. I called her to let her know it was coming, and she called me back a little later to confirm that she had received it and would present it as soon as possible. She warned us that the sellers would probably try to schedule one last-ditch open house that weekend to see if they could scare up any other competing buyers that they could play us off against before responding to our offer one way or the other. Sure enough, the MLS listing was still live on every real estate web site I checked, having been put back up immediately after the other buyer backed out -- if it was ever taken down at all.

Now all we could do was wait. I left the apartment once again to meet my hubby for dinner.

I couldn't even imagine having had to deal with all of this during a normal work week. It had felt like a full-time job in and of itself.

Once we got home, the combination of the cumulative stress from the week, and all the pressure applied to us from all sides, and the tremendous amount of time I'd lost during what was supposed to be a vacation, and the complete lack of any assurance that it would even pan out or be worth the sacrifice in the end, had reached critical mass. Though I'd been able to enjoy at least a few recreational activities throughout the week, they were all tempered by the tension and drama raging in the background. My much-needed time off from work had been a far cry from the relaxing, envigorating retreat I'd originally envisioned. In fact, I felt worse at the end of it than I did at the beginning. It was, as my hubby put it, a "fake-ation." The last straw was an absolutely awful subway ride back, during which a gang of kids was making so much noise in our immediate vicinity that it literally hurt my ears, followed by having an eyefull of graffiti covering every wall of the elevator that brought us to street level in our neighborhood. I felt irrevocably trapped in a city I hated, utterly powerless to alter my fate. When we returned home that evening, I sobbed in frustration. In the four years we had been together, and the two and a half years of our marriage, my hubby had never seen me cry. Now in the past two weeks, I had cried twice.

The worst part of it was that the following morning, I felt no better, and broke down once again shortly after breakfast. The fact that the weekend had arrived brought me no joy at all, as it ordinarily would. One day was very much like another, and it felt like the more of it I spent asleep and unconscious, the better. I declared myself offically depressed. This was the worst I'd felt in at least a decade.

Just as I started heading towards bed, my hubby advised me to pack a change of clothes because we'd be leaving shortly for Cape May, one of my favorite vacation spots. I was completely baffled.

He had decided that drastic measures were called for, and arranged a surprise trip for that night and the following day -- all on his dime (since we had already agreed that vacations were out of the question on joint funds until after we'd bought a house). In 15 minutes, he'd arranged both the rental car -- appropriately enough, a Ford Escape -- and a room in a clean, efficient motel near the center of town. He told me to bring my favorite CDs to listen to in the car -- whatever was most likely to cheer me up.

I was touched, and yes, even encouraged. In that moment, I felt completely and utterly loved.

The next couple of hours were a flurry of activity as we packed up our things and my hubby went to fetch the rental car. In the meantime, I bought the coming week's groceries, stocked up the overnight bag with snacks, and brought down all the trash. These tasks constituted a welcome distraction. By the time he returned, I was ready to roll.

As the miles between ourselves and New York City began to increase, so did my well-being. The combination of the cheerful, soothing music I brought, picturesque scenes of spring rolling by, and company of my wonderful life partner gladdened my heart. By the time we arrived in Cape May that evening, I already felt far better. There was a minor hiccup when our realtor called my hubby on his cell phone to say that the sellers had not yet responded to our offer and, according to their agent, kept postponing their reply, and that this was really unusual behavior -- the last thing I needed to hear. My hubby explained that we were on vacation and that she shouldn't call again unless there was real news to report, which I appreciated -- especially since it seemed like she was only stoking our feelings of powerlessness, which was totally unproductive. I tried my best not to dwell on it, and was able to successfully and fully enjoy the rest of our trip.

Being in a place that made me happy brought back happy memories not only of past trips there, but also, surprisingly, of happy occasions throughout the course of my entire life. We had a wonderful time while we were there, and more importantly, I was reminded of the good things I had -- and would always have as a part of me -- whether we found a house before the expiration of our lease or not. Those two days completely out of town did me more good than the entire preceding week off from work. The key for me, it seems, is not being in New York at all -- even if only temporarily. Throughout the years whenever I've travelled, I've always felt like a weight was lifted once I left the city, almost like being reborn. Returning home was often a letdown. But at least this time, I felt like I had the strength to face whatever might come our way.

When we returned on Sunday night, we decided to give the sellers an ultimatum, on my mom's advice, so that they couldn't just ignore our offer indefinitely while they tried to line up another buyer. If they made no response to our offer by noon the next day, we would tell them they had only 24 hours more to do so or else our offer would be withdrawn. After all the pressure they'd put on us, all the games of hurry-up-and-wait, and all the hoops they'd made us jump through, this seemed only reasonable.

Noon on Monday came and went. Nothing. I started to pick up the phone to relay our ultimatum to our realtor, and at the same moment, my dad called to ask how things were going. As I started to explain, my other line rang. I told him I'd call back. It was my hubby, with news from our realtor. The sellers had accepted our offer.

THE SELLERS HAD ACCEPTED OUR OFFER. HOLY &@*!#$%!!! THEY DIDN'T REJECT IT. THEY DIDN'T EVEN COUNTER IT. THEY ACCEPTED!!!

Needless to say, my hubby and I were over the moon. We quickly relayed the good news to our parents, and our scheduled closing date of May 21st to our bosses, with a warning that a request for 2 weeks off would soon follow. My hubby scheduled a home inspection with the firm we'd selected (by comparing sample report styles and scope, length of experience in the industry, and references by customers) for that Saturday, hoping attorney review would conclude by then. I put our loan officer on notice so that she could get the mortgage process going, and I requested a formal written estimate from the radon remediation firm I had previously contacted so that we could present it to the sellers through our attorney.

On Tuesday morning, we heard from our attorney, and he asked us whether we had any suggested modifications to the contract. We decided that we'd like the down payment date moved back by a week to allow just a little more time for all the various transfers from our hodgepodge of accounts to clear, asked that the swingset currently on the property be removed, and also requested a credit in the amount of the estimate I'd received from the radon remediation firm. He said he would include these requests in his letter of introduction. In the meantime, he had still not received any communication from the sellers' attorney.

There was no sign of real movement from either end by Wednesday, the third (and supposedly final) day of attorney review, so we started getting a bit worried (as did our realtor, who called to ask us what was going on). I left a followup message for our attorney asking if anything had happened, and he called back later that afternoon to say that he was just about to send his letter of introduction containing our requested modifications to the ratified contract, and had still not heard from the sellers' attorney. Apparently our contract was emerging right at the time of month when closings were at a peak, so neither attorney was in the office much or able to focus on the matter as a high priority.

Thursday and Friday morning came and went with no response to our requests from the sellers' attorney. Once again, we were being completely ignored. It was looking likely that we might have to reschedule the home inspection.

Finally, well into Friday afternoon, our attorney called back to relay the sellers' response: no to the down payment due date extension (which none of us, including the sellers' attorney, could understand, since they wouldn't be able to spend the money until after closing anyway, by which point they'd have 100% of the purchase price -- clearly it was a purely psychological issue), yes to the removal of the swingset (which surprised us), and that the conversation about the amount of the radon remediation credit would be deferred until after the home inspection and discussed with other inspection-related issues. The down payment due date would be tight, but we figured we could probably pull it off if we set the wheels in motion immediately. So we agreed to conclude attorney review and proceed with the inspection, just in the nick of time.

The next morning, we took the train out to Morris Plains and our realtor picked us up to take us to the house. It turned out that the home inspector was already there examining the outside of the property. Methodically and carefully, he made his way completely around the perimeter and went from room to room. The exact details of what he said are too lengthy to reprint here, and are contained within an entirely separate inspection report, but the upshot was that there were no red flags. Overall, the house was in good shape. There were several tips he gave us about what might need to be done or replaced soon, and a few things small things that needed to be attended to immediately, but nothing that fell squarely within the sellers' responsibility to fix or that made the house unlivable as-is. He was a very calm, patient, well-spoken, and thorough inspector, and was clearly very knowledgeable about his profession. My hubby took copious notes and we learend an awful lot about being responsible homeowners and how to optimize all the various systems of a house. It really was like home ownership boot camp, and we asked lots of questions, which allowed us to get more out of his evaluation. Although somewhat overwhelming, we felt ready to handle it. Our attorney later commented that the report our home inspector generated was particularly well organized and the concepts clearly expressed, and that from what he could tell, the house seemed relatively sound. All in all, we were very pleased with the job he did, and relieved by the outcome of his work.

So, with that major hurdle out of the way, we were ready to set the wheels in motion for our eventual move. We made arrangements to transfer funds from all our various bank and investment accounts into our joint checking account for the down payment, the biggest check to be written in either of our entire lives. Yet strangely, I felt no jitters whatsoever as I prepared to part with a good chunk of the savings I'd built up over the years since I first began working. This was, in fact, exactly what I'd intended to use it for all along, and I knew it would be money well spent. Almost two decades of diligent scrimping would, with any luck, finally make my long-held dream a reality.

Once More into the Breach, My Friends

Sometimes life happens too fast and too intensely to be able to capture it as it's unfolding. This has certainly been the case over the past month, during which it's felt like our home-buying lives have been turned completely upside-down.

But let's start from the beginning. As planned, my hubby and I rented a car on the third weekend in March to explore the Morristown area, taking along with us all the listings our realtor had sent us to preliminarily explore the neighborhoods and the outsides of the properties.

As expected, we really liked what Morristown's downtown area had to offer, and made a second visit to Kings; we discovered that we appreciated it even more than we did in the course of our first visit. As far as we were concerned, it was definitely the "king" of supermarkets, especially in terms of its variety of gourmet and vegetarian items, and its selection of pre-prepared food. We had a delightful lunch at a place my mom had recommended, Callaloo Cafe, which provided a great view of the emerging greenery in its back lot, fun music at a reasonable volume, plenty of space to move around in (a welcome contrast to restaurants in NYC), good service, and *delicious* food (I had a fabulous angel hair primavera pasta flavored with lemon and olive oil). The portions were so huge that I had to get about half of it to go. But then the dessert menus came. I'd started cutting back on desserts when going out to eat because it seemed as though I'd been indulging in them overmuch lately, but the darned place managed to hack into my system with a Diet Override Code in the form of a cappuccino mousse -- none of the NYC restaurants I'd been to had ever offered *that*, so I simply couldn't pass up this non-replicable experience. (And it was worth it!) After lunch, we continued our stroll around the downtown streets on foot in what was luckily relatively warm weather (for March!), and even popped into Century 21 briefly, which was mighty department-store medicine indeed.

We were in for a surprise when we explored the residential areas, however. Our first stop was a large-ish ranch house whose owners happened to be home and let us in to explore its lovely interior, complete with large living room picture window, jacuzzi tub in the newly renovated bathroom, substantially-sized bedrooms, and colossal basement, all in excellent condition. But there was just one problem -- the front and back yards were *vertical*. Yes, that's right -- the house was situated on a lot tilted at what felt like a 45-degree angle, such that I was unsure of my footing outside and was envisioning nightmare scenarios of our car uncontrollably careening down what would be an ice-covered driveway during the depths of winter. We hadn't bargained for a property that required rappelling gear to navigate!

And the worst part is that it wasn't just a fluke. Nearly every single other property listing we checked posed similar problems -- they were all either embedded into or at the edge or base of a cliff. So were about 80% of the other houses in town; since we had a town map with us and an entire day to explore, we drove along virtually every street listed. We'd had no idea that Morristown's residential areas were situated on such dramatic terrain! Driving along the road was very reminiscent of the deep-dipping hills of San Francisco, where I'd just been on business the week before. We felt like we were in some kind of post-modern adaptation of "The Sound of Music." How did people manage to live like this? Were they all die-hard hikers??? I mean don't get me wrong, the idea of living in the mountains is certainly appealing, but come on!

The remaining 20% of the areas in Morristown that did not have this issue consisted of homes at the two opposite extremes of the economic scale, oddly enough. The neighborhoods were either clearly run-down and industrial-looking, or they were so visibly wealthy that we could tell the houses would be way, way out of our price range without looking up a single listing.

So where did that leave us middle-classers? We drove home feeling massively disappointed. Apparently Morristown was not quite as strong a prospect as it had originally seemed. We were back to Square One. Again.

After we woke up the next morning, we recalled that there were two other areas just outside of Morristown itself: Morris Plains and Morris Township. Since Morris Plains was geographically the more straightforward of the two in terms of a defined locale, and since we still had the rental car for another day, we figured we had nothing to lose by exploring Morris Plains as well (despite the fact that only a couple of listings there showed up online in our price range -- all the others were significantly higher -- which was daunting).

The weather was warm and sunny, and made for a delightful drive over. And what a difference we saw! The land was quite level (as the town's name suggested), and the area was uniformly pleasant -- no sketchy bits to avoid at all as far as we could tell. The houses were consistently well cared for, and green space was abundant (largely in the form of vast parks and stretches of woods). The train station was in good condition (though on a smaller scale than Morristown's) and the town itself was compact enough that a 15-minute walk in any direction from that point covered most of it. The downtown area of Morris Plains contained all the essential goods and services we would need, and the storefronts suggested a solid middle-class business district. (Only when we crossed the town border into part of Morris Township did it start to feel a bit more exurban.) Better yet, just about everyone we passed in the street was friendly and visibly relaxed and happy. What really sold us on Morris Plains was that it was a great place to take a day trip even if we hadn't been house-hunting there. The question was: could we afford it? We wrapped up the day by grabbing some ice cream at Friendly's before driving back home.

Over the next few days, our realtor sent us several listings, most of which were in Morris Township but one of which was in Morris Plains. On Sunday of the following weekend, we took the train into NJ to go exploring with her for the first time. Or so we thought. About halfway there, my hubby's cell phone rang -- it was our realtor. Her mother, who we learned was suffering from cancer, had apparently taken a sudden turn for the worse that looked like it might be fatal, so she was unavailable to meet with us. The situation was more than understandable, but left us in an awkward position. However, she was considerate enough to have arranged for a replacement to meet us and take us into the properties we were interested in investigating.

She was certainly nothing to write home about, despite our realtor's high praise for her competence and temperament. After showing up nearly half an hour late at the station, she proceeded to get lost on the roads she was traveling on, lose track of which listings we were seeing (none of which she'd seen herself), brag about the million-dollar homes she'd sold, and even inadvertently insult us by commenting that the places where we worked implied that we didn't make much money (which we don't, but was it necessary for her to be so crass about it?). And on top of that, she wasn't particularly articulate and didn't tell us much of anything useful about the areas we were driving through. It was deja-vu: our old realtor from Maplewood all over again.

Our initial stops were a few ugly townhouses in crummy parts of Morristown that felt oppressive as soon as we walked into them -- cavernous and light-starved despite the sunny day, carpeted to death, and surrounded by parking lots and concrete. We would sooner have stayed in our existing apartment -- which has much better views from the windows and a much nicer interior -- and rented for another year. After our discouraging trip to Morristown, we had initially decided to consider townhouses as well as single-family houses in an attempt to maximize our options, but we saw that it was just NOT WORTH IT! (Our realtor later explained that townhouses in Morristown were for the most part limited to the less desirable parts of town because people in single-family homes wouldn't allow them to be developed in their neighborhoods, for fear of negatively impacting property values.)

We saw a few other houses afterwards in the Morris Township section we had briefly entered during our rental car excursion. While it certainly didn't feel unsafe, it was clearly less appealing than neighboring Morris Plains. The houses themselves were...interesting. Each had its own unique charm -- and problems. One house, which had a very cool, spacious open floor plan and abundant wood floors, also gave me the sense that it had been cheaply constructed, and it had a backyard whose boundaries terminated in a steep drop on all sides. Another couple of houses, whose interiors were tastefully decorated and came with great new appliances (including, in one of them, a large-screen TV!), had a very awkward, chopped-up layout and a series of small (almost to the point of being unusable) rooms and similarly small common areas.

We then headed over to Morris Plains to see the single listing our realtor had sent us for that area. And it looked wonderful. The house was on a corner lot, and the front yard was beautifully landscaped with a Japanese maple and blue spruce tree, along with other attractive shrubs. The backyard was completely level, well cared for, and spacious enough even for a large-ish dog -- and already fenced in to boot! There was solid, elegant cobblestone paving around the perimeter that culminated in a patio out back, offering a view of the entire yard, and a sliding glass door behind it leading to the inside. The windows throughout were almost all new.

The interior was quite nice as well, if a little less impressive than the outside. It was in good condition throughout, though the rooms were a bit on the small side. The living room and dining room, while adequate, were at the edge of what we would consider comfortable. The galley kitchen, while offering plenty of counter and cupboard space, was not big enough to include a small table with chairs like our apartment kitchen does. And the four bedrooms, a bit more than we needed, seemed like they might be challenging in terms of accommodating our relatively large furniture (especially since two of those four bedrooms were functionally in the attic, with sloped ceilings beneath the eaves of the roof). The floor in one of the bedrooms on the ground floor was also quite rough, and would clearly need redoing. There was a half-bath in the attic and a full bath on the ground level -- we would have preferred the opposite way around, though we realized there was room to expand the upstairs one later. There was a large finished basement in great shape with all kinds of potential, but no obvious signs of heating, which could be an issue during the winter, though we realized we could probably add forced-air heating later without too much trouble, and that it might already offer some natural insulation by being underground.

Angels did not sing, but it was a great house -- by far the best we'd seen so far. We decided to have my parents come and take a look at it. Luckily they were available right away, and while we waited for them to get there, we went to see the last property on our list, a townhouse in a part of Morris Township near the Convent Station train station -- and a total bust. In addition to it just plain not impressing us at all, the kiss of death was that all its front windows looked onto a tennis court. No grass, no trees, not even a parking lot -- a tennis court! Hey, we have nothing against tennis, but we had no interest whatsoever in having it visually dominate our lives. And one had to wonder how many stray balls resulted in shattered windows on the property. NO THANKS!

Once my parents arrived at the Morris Plains house we liked, they essentially echoed all the same pros and cons about it that we had assessed. Overall, though, they (like us) thought that the balance was in the house's favor.

And then out of the blue, the agent we were going around with got a call from our realtor! Apparently her mother's condition had significantly improved and she was out of immediate danger, so was free to come and meet us. When she arrived, we were glad to see her and brought her up to speed on our findings.

After some extended discussion amongst all of us, and some further conversation at the realtor's office, my parents, my hubby, and I all went out for dinner at Callaloo Cafe aftewards, during which they gave their blessing for my hubby and me to make an offer on the house provided we gave ourselves a chance to sleep on it and take measurements to make sure that all our belongings would comfortably fit. (We vowed to bring a tape measure and our furniture dimensions with us on every house-hunting trip from that point forward so that we wouldn't have to keep making repeat visits.)

We called our realtor the next day and made an appointment for the following day to go back and measure. It was going to be a tight squeeze to arrange all our possessions sensibly within it, and we weren't sure if we could make it work. The *overall* space of the house was great, but the space within the individual rooms was a bit of an issue, especially considering how much of the wall space was unusable due to the extensive presence of radiators beneath every window and an excess of closets in random places along the walls. We would rather there had been fewer, larger rooms rather than so many small rooms, but my hubby's mom insightfully pointed out that the two downstairs bedrooms, which were directly adjacent, could have the wall between them knocked down to create a larger space.

In the meantime, we had our realtor request a seller's disclosure from the selling agent, which upon examination seemed to have been somewhat carelessly put together. The listing had advertised an updated roof, while the disclosure listed it as 10 years old. Just how updated was "updated"? Our realtor called the seller's agent for clarification, and was told that the roof was in fact only 5 years old -- but nowhere did that appear in writing, which we considered a major oversight. The seller's disclosure also indicated that a radon test had been done, but did not report the outcome of that test. And finally, it turned out that an oil tank had been found underground during a previous inspection, but at least it had been addressed and deemed safe. These points would all require some further pursuit and written vetting.

We also received some unsettling news -- a couple of other people who had seen the house around the same time we did had also requested seller's disclosures, one of whom had indicated to the seller's agent that an offer would be forthcoming. The price had just recently been dropped by about $30,000, which resulted in somewhat of a feeding frenzy. Great, a competitor -- the last thing we needed!

The following day we went back, tape measure in hand, and determined that everything would fit, if only barely (under the condition that we used the basement as an office, praying that it wouldn't be too cold until we could afford to install forced-air heating). We also timed a leisurely walk from the house to the train station: exactly 12 minutes. It looked like a go. We went back to the realtor's office, signed the offer contract, and held our breath. We were comforted that at least we would be the first ones to be getting our offer in, and that our realtor considered our initial offer price a fair one. She said she would try to present our offer in person to the seller's agent and hopefully even to the sellers themselves if possible -- a very different approach taken from that of our previous realtor in Maplewood, who did it all by phone and fax.

We received a call later that evening from our realtor saying that the competing party had called and promised to have their offer in by first thing the following morning, and that the sellers, who worked late, were not yet home, so she couldn't deliver the offer in person. Since our offers were arriving so close together, the seller's agent said it was likely that both would be considered equally. We would probably hear something by late the following morning.

The following morning and afternoon came and went, with complete silence from our realtor. Finally at around 4pm, I called her to find out what the heck was going on. No answer, so I had to leave a message. She called me back about half an hour later with an update: apparently the two offers were relatively close -- the competitor's was a little higher, but they couldn't close as soon, and the sellers were anxious to close ASAP. So their decision was to have both parties make their best and final offer, with no third chances for haggling, and that the higher of the two offers would be accepted regardless of closing date. Our realtor told us that the seller's agent had confided in her that the seller was not a particularly nice guy; he'd worked with him for a long time, and found that he was prone to fits of bad temper, from which the seller's agent wanted to protect our realtor. Great, so the seller was basically a jerk, too! YAY.

We agonized over what to offer. We were certainly prepared to go up, but by how much was not clear. On one hand, we knew that this house was a good find and we didn't want to risk losing it, but on the other, we were hesitant to go very close to the asking price because it was at the top of our range, and this was not our dream home. And besides, whatever happened to this alleged "buyer's market"? We didn't want to overpay in a purchasing climate that was supposedly in our favor because we got carried away in a bidding war. Besides, the best months for inventory, April and May, were still ahead of us. And we could even go into June if we had to. We didn't want to part with too much too soon.

So we made a second offer about $8,000 higher than our first one. And we got creamed by the competition, whose offer was $10,000 higher even than *that* -- with a 25% down payment to boot. Twenty-five percent -- how was that possible??? It was a struggle for us to offer even our measly little 5%. We guessed that either she was not a first-time home-buyer and therefore had built up equity from a previous house that allowed her to do it, or had an extremely high-paying job, or had gotten a generous alimony package, or was independently wealthy. But whatever the reason, she was clearly far beyond us in terms of material assets. We were playing in the big leagues now.

We dusted ourselves off as best as we could, and tried to be optimistic about our future possibilities. There were no appropriate listings to explore last weekend, so we stayed home and did our taxes instead. At least we're getting a refund this year, which is a welcome contrast to last year and an unexpected surprise -- more to add to the house-cash hopper!

And then this past Monday, I got more bad news, this time from our loan officer. That measly little 5% we were counting on being able put down, free of PMI? No longer an option. She informed us that the investors who buy loans and the banks that underwrite lender-paid MI are panicking as the economy continues to spiral downwards and fewer people are in a position to stay on top of their colossal debt loads. Apparently 5% is too close for comfort for most of them -- even when it comes to people with great credit -- in the event that borrowers end up defaulting on their loans in a declining housing market with the threat of negative equity looming large. The lenders would then be stuck with an investment that was worth less than what the borrower paid for it. They now required 10% down as a minimum for lender-paid MI -- *double* what we had originally planned. We still had the 5% option if we agreed to pay PMI (which specifically safeguards the lender against such a situation), but the significant added expense of PMI (.78% of the total loan amount divided by 12) would reduce by quite a bit the total purchase price we'd be able to pay to yield the same monthly figure. And to be frank, we're already close to the bottom of the heap in the towns we've been looking in as it is, so we need all the wiggle room we can get.

Our only other options were to:
a) do an FHA (Fannie Mae, government-subsidized) loan, which would still require some PMI, would necessitate a higher interest rate each month, and would involve a 3/8% price adjustment payment upfront so as not to get charged the maximum interest rate,
b) revisit the issue of the VA loan my hubby qualifies for which, while requiring no PMI, would involve a higher interest rate and would put us completely at the mercy of the VA's appraisers, whose byzantine regulations often translate into deal-killers on the homes being reviewed (we even found the regulations they use online, which supported our impressions),
or
c) hope that my family would offer to close the gap for the remaining 5%. This was certainly the easiest option logistically, but the most difficult psychologically. My family, while financially stable, isn't exactly rolling in dough, and having them chip in on our behalf would prevent them from being able to do other things with their hard-earned cash. And 5% is not a trivial amount for the price range we've been looking in -- it would be 2/3 above and beyond the total we both had available, including a good chunk of my entire life's savings.

That night, before I fell asleep, I finally broke down and cried. This was all just seeming more and more impossible by the day. The prospect of having to renew our lease for another year seemed very real, and was a scenario I utterly dreaded with every fiber of my being. I'd *already* been stuck in NYC for far longer than I'd ever wanted to be. My hubby tried to comfort me as best as he could, but my sense of hope was in tatters. One of my co-workers who had been looking for a house in NJ with her husband a couple of years ago said that it was one of the most stressful and depressing times of her life, and now I understood why. In the end, the right place at the right price never materialized for them, and they continued to rent. What if that happened to us too? What if all our Herculean efforts amounted only to failure?

The rest of the week was a slog as we weighed our options. My parents and grandmother recognized the gravity of our situation and were very supportive, saying they would help how they could. Even our loan officer was concerned about how I was doing in the wake of the bomb she'd dropped in our laps (which, we fully knew, was completely beyond her control); she e-mailed me to check up on me and assure me that she would do everything she could to facilitate whatever loan we decided on, and that she wouldn't let us lose a property if she could possibly find a way around it. I was touched that she cared!

In the end, my dad asked that we send him and my mom some documentation indicating how we had arrived at our calculations of what we could afford to spend month-to-month versus our anticiapted costs, and what we could afford to spend upfront versus our anticipated costs, taking into account the tax benefit that we would get as homeowners and what our net pay would be taking 10 exemptions each. These calculations had taken nearly a month to work out, and were not in a form that was comprehensible to much of anyone besides myself and maybe my hubby. And the exemption component was new -- we had to ask our respective payroll departments about it.

So I spent several hours re-compiling the figures across multiple Excel spreadsheets in an easily digestible format, completely disclosing all the details of our finances. It was hard to know how all this information would be interpreted and what the implications would be, but in the spirit of transparency and the fact that we needed their help, it seemed like the right thing to do.

At the very end of the week, I had a long-overdue appointment with my hairdresser. As she combed through my wet hair, she alerted me to several clearly visible clumps that kept coming out in her comb. As she kept combing, the clumps kept coming. She said that ordinarily wasn't supposed to happen more than twice, but it seemed to happen no matter how many times she combed, so she stopped for fear of removing too much hair. She said she could see a thinning spot on my scalp that she was concerned about, and asked if I'd changed anything in my diet or in my routine, etc. I hadn't particularly, other than that my stress level had been through the roof, which I mentioned to her. Not only was there all the house stuff to contend with, but work had been insanely busy all along as well. She tried to encourage me as much as possible and urged me to try to combat the stress as much as I could because the long-term physical effects of it could be serious, which I already knew. Easier said than done, but I appreciated her concern and she was definitely coming from the right place. "Things have a way of working out," she told me repeatedly. "Don't make yourself sick."

In the meantime, our realtor had come up with a few more listings for us to consider exploring this weekend. Most of them were, unfortunately, much too far from the train stations to be walked to and from within a reasonable amount of time on a regular basis, and others had rooms that were even more chopped up than the ones in the house on which we had made an offer, but three candidates remained. We made arrangements with our realtor to go and see them yesterday, and so we did.

One of them was a house in Morristown that was severely marked down in asking price despite what seemed on paper like stunning interiors because it was located right next to a hospital, with all the accompanying noise pollution that that entailed -- sirens, helicopters landing, and frequent traffic -- not a very residential experience. The backyard also faced directly onto a parking lot, which didn't help either. And the walk to and from the train station was quite a bit farther than it had looked on our map. As it turned out, the house had gone under contract before we'd even gotten there, so for someone, the price was right. Even at the reduction, we knew it wasn't what we were looking for.

The second house we saw was one that, in all our time browsing listings thus far, had come the closest to seeming like it could be our dream home -- it was in Morris Township just 2 blocks from the border of Morris Plains, and we had seen alluring online photos showing a spacious living room and formal dining room with gleaming hardwood floors, a kitchen large enough to accommodate a small table and chairs as well as having plenty of counter and cupboard space, generously sized bedrooms, a huge finished basement, and a wooden deck with a tree view, all in seemingly great condition. It also had 3 full bathrooms and central air, which were unusual in the price range we'd been looking in, and was made of brick as opposed to the vinyl and aluminum siding of nearly every other property we'd seen. We braced ourselves for the catch. As our realtor drove us towards its location, we passed a street corner with a liquor store, gas station, hole-in-the-wall deli, auto body shop, and Pizza Hut all clustered together. Please don't turn there, I thought.

She turned there.

Damnit. So *that* was the explanation for the relatively reasonable price.

The photos of the house's interior did not lie -- the downstairs looked even more stunning in person. It felt almost like a gallery. The basement was even nicer than that of the house we'd just put a bid on (with the exception of the plethora of stuffed dear heads, skulls, and antlers mounted on the wall, and the stuffed coyote and fox that had been positioned on the floor). The bedrooms were plenty spacious, although I found the closets in them awkward and hard to deal with -- some on a sliding track (which I can't stand, because they *always* get stuck and it's a pain to constantly wrestle with them) and some which had very short stretches of racks for hangers interrupted by big blocky shelves, for which we had no use. These issues could be worked around and certainly weren't dealbreakers, but they further dampened my enthusiasm. The railings along the stairs and the lamppost in the front yard were also quite wobbly, and the upstairs bedroom, while enormously spacious, felt odd -- nothing we could really put a finger on, but something we both sensed in equal measure. The biggest disappointment, however, was the backyard. Although it was separated from the inside of the house by beautiful French doors, it was not only somewhat small, but it offered no privacy whatsoever -- all the neighboring houses were practically piled on top of it, to the extent that all the yards in the area almost gave the impression of being shared space. It felt more like an apartment complex than a house on the outside, and it didn't help that the current owners had firmly installed a very prominent and tacky castle-shaped play structure in which to store their patio furniture and children's outdoor toys. As far as the front yard went, the path to the end of the block had no sidewalk, so I would have had to walk in the street itself twice a day, every day, to get back and forth from the train station.

So, perhaps it could have been our dream house as long as we never set foot outside. And if we weren't going to enjoy the outside, why buy a house? We might as well stay in the concrete box we were already renting but at least not committed to.

We timed the walk to the Morris Plains train station -- exactly 15 minutes, which was just within our limit.

Was it worth bringing my parents out to see it? We thought and thought and thought about it, and then we decided it wasn't what we wanted. It had more space than we would realistically need, and left something to be desired location-wise. With the "location, location, location" mantra thoroughly drummed into our heads, we figured this might not be the wisest investment of our resources -- and we still had almost three more months to find something better. Besides, we weren't yet sure how the financial conundrum we'd recently found ourselves in would be resolved.

We looked at one more house, this one in Morris Plains and exquisitely located, right across the street from the library and a large park and surrounded by many lovely homes. However, the owner had decided to build an addition onto the back of the house whose workmanship was of far poorer quality than that of the rest of the house. There was no longer a formal dining room, and instead one of the new bedrooms was being used for that purpose. That might not have been a problem if the floor of said bedroom didn't look more appropriate for a laundry room than a dining room. The other bedrooms had a drab, dull vibe to them and I felt like I was sick of the place before we even left. While it wasn't openly run-down or shabby, it had an unkempt, bogged-down feel to it. My hubby and I both agreed that we would actually be embarrassed to have guests there, so it wouldn't do at all despite the ideal location.

Our realtor once again offered the encouragement that April and May were very good months for inventory, and said that she would be continuing to look out for good places for us, probably sticking primarily to Morris Plains. That seemed reasonable to us, though it was disappointing to leave empty-handed.

Afterwards we met up with my parents, and discussed all the documents I sent them, and our financial situation, at great length. The upshot of the discussion was that they thought the calculations and our estimates were basically sound, though they helped us tweak a few items in the context of their tax implications, and suggested a bigger budget for a used car. To our delight, they agreed to cover the remaining 5% we would need for the down payment. While we would rather there not have been a need for it, we were thrilled and touched by their generosity, and liberated by the knowledge that we could continue to proceed in our search as we had been, unhindered.

So now it's just a matter of waiting for the right place to show up!!!

Notes from the Field

Yesterday, my mom drove us into Morristown so we could get an initial sense of what it was like.

It was a brisk, clear day following Saturday's torrential rain and howling wind, so the visibility was great. We mostly stuck to the commercial areas since those were the parts my mom knew, and were where it was easiest to pinpoint specific destinations.

The town presented a clean, well-kept face, with an impressive array of goods and services. It seemed comparable in size to some much larger cities we'd seen outside of New York, while still feeling very recognizably like NJ and retaining a small-town sensibility about it. We liked the fact that the office-park type areas were in a distinctly separate section from the myriad restaurants, shops, galleries, and charming cafes, which were all clustered within a very walkable downtown. One thing that particularly struck us was that even on a Sunday, there was noticeable activity in evidence, which we hadn't seen in many other places -- even Philadelphia! When I think of Morristown as we saw it yesterday, the word "happening" comes to mind. It struck us as the kind of place that would be able to stand on its own in providing real entertainment options on a Friday or Saturday night, as well as honest-to-goodness employment opportunities, rather than having to heavily rely on adjacent locales for its viability. This was something we found particularly appealing. Furthermore, we were really impressed with its branch of Kings supermarket. While not self-consciously quaint the way Maplewood's was, it was *much* bigger, with a far wider selection -- we daresay it rivals even our favorite supermarkets in NYC. We also checked out the train station. Again, it didn't present a distinctive image like Maplewood's, but it had indoor waiting areas on *both* sides of the track, rather than just one, and was spacious, clean (including the restrooms), and sensibly laid out. Trains run on weekends there, too.

We also stopped by one of the major real estate offices in town to get the name of an agent we could call, and were surprised when the person manning the desk turned out to be an agent herself. She immediately pulled up some listings on her computer corresponding to ones we'd seen online ourselves, and offered to take us to see them in three weeks' time (we can't go next weekend because I'll be out of town, and the following weekend is Easter weekend so she won't be available). We would like to have interviewed her extensively and asked for references, as we'd planned to do with any future agent we worked with, but the situation wasn't conducive to it and we were on a tight schedule. On the other hand, we figured that we could sort of interview her as we went along, rather than limiting that process to a specific time and place. And since nobody in my family had recommended her, it would be easier to extricate ourselves earlier on in the process if we weren't happy with her. That being said, we got a very positive first impression of her. She was particularly friendly, alert, and a good listener, and struck us as being more efficient than any of the realtors we'd spoken with in Maplewood. Let's hope this translates into much better service than what we got previously!

My hubby and I decided that we would use the intervening time the weekend after next to rent a car and explore some of the residential areas on our own, just to get a clear grasp of the layout and the various neighborhoods. That was a piece we didn't really have a clear understanding of during this trip, and would obviously be critical to a well-informed decision.

But based on what we've seen up to this point, our general feeling is: so far, so good.

The Defense Rests

A couple of nights ago, my hubby and I were getting ready to go to sleep but somehow still felt a little wound up from the day. Just for the fun of it, we started launching into a few Beatles tunes, singing in two-part harmony. What a blast! Until we heard a *thump thump thump* coming from somewhere in the apartment. We couldn't tell what it was or exactly where it was coming from, but it kind of broke the flow of things and, realizing it was after midnight, we ended up making an extra effort to get to sleep, which was ultimately successful.

The next morning as I was leaving the building for work, our downstairs neighbor greeted me in the hall, which I reciprocated. Just as I was halfway out the door, he added, "Sorry to knock on the ceiling last night, but the Beatles were keeping us up." I was mortified! The walls in our apartment are so thick we can barely hear each other in the next room, so this was surprising news. What else could they hear??? "I'm so sorry," I said sheepishly. "I really apolgoize." I felt terrible about it, but the mischievous part of me was also amused as heck at the same time. I figured I would slip a card under their door the next day to hopefully make amends, and that we'd keep a better eye on our volume level (and the time!) in the future.

My hubby and I never thought we would be the "bad" neighbors! But this is just one more argument for getting a house -- it seems to be in the best interests of others around us as well as our own. :-)

Off the Hook

This morning, my hubby called the realtor to apologize for the misunderstanding and relay our decision using wording we had carefully scripted together, with input from my parents, for maximum success in placating her. It seemed to work, as there were no ruffled feathers in direct evidence when they spoke. He told her we'd get back in touch when we were ready to resume searching in Maplewood, possibly looking at houses closer to the high end of our range, but that in the meantime we'd be exploring other options elsewhere, with local realtors in those areas. She was a good sport about it and told him she looked forward to hearing from us.

In the meantime, my mom kindly offered to take us into Morristown this coming Saturday afternoon and show us around so we could get a feel for it, which I'm looking forward to. We've found over and over that regardless of how good a place sounds on paper, there's no substitute for an in-person visit, so it should be interesting to see how it strikes us "in the flesh." And so a new chapter of the adventure begins!

There and Back Again

What a crazy couple of weeks it's been! Over President's Day, we brought my parents to see the house, and while they would have liked to see us in a physically larger place, a fancier part of town, and a house with more "curb appeal," they conceded that it was at least decent, given the limitations of what we could get for what we wanted to pay. My hubby and I knew the place would need some minor improvements and, eventually, a complete overhaul to the partially-finished attic, but there were no initial red flags indicating any significant structural defects prior to bringing in an inspector. We also found in looking at other listings with slightly higher asking prices, in which the houses seemed bigger at first blush, that they either had smaller rooms, smaller lots, or were in worse repair. One unique feature that this particular house offered was a yard that could potentially be developed into a second lot, if only barely. We also appreciated the fact that its roof, hot water heater, and furnace had been replaced within the past two years, and that its back deck was visibly new and solidly built.

That being said, we spent a great deal of time since then addressing some of my parents' concerns:

* The size: We acknowledged that as houses went, the place was on the small side -- with roughly the equivalent usable space of our current apartment plus a separate living room/dining room, basement, attic, front porch, deck, and garage -- but we weren't too worried about it since the apartment suits us well space-wise at the moment and we are constantly vigilant about not accumulating too much stuff. Just to make sure, though, we went back to the house the following weekend with tape measure in hand, having already measured all the furniture and large objects we owned, to make doubly sure that everything would comfortably fit within the layout of the new place and also allow a little room for a couple of new pieces of furniture. My hubby then drew up a floor plan for the first floor, second floor, and attic with all the relevant measurements, and after experimenting with a few possible arrangements, we found a layout that would perfectly accommodate all our existing possessions plus a couple of new ones.

* The neighborhood: While the immediate surrounding area seemed perfectly fine to my hubby and me, my parents were concerned about the fact that the houses in the area, while clean and well maintained, looked "low-end," and that the nearest retail businesses were somewhat exurban in nature (auto and auto parts dealerships, fast-food joints, etc.). They thought that these might translate into issues affecting the safety of the area and our ability to resell the house later on down the line.

On the same day we went back to take measurements inside the house, we walked around the neighborhood extensively (luckily it was relatively warm that day, and so wasn't much of a hardship). The other houses in all directions were well kept and respectable, and the sidewalks had all been shovelled from the recent snowfall. We even saw a few Mercedes parked in a couple of the driveways, so we figured the neighborhood couldn't possibly be as shabby as my parents had feared! We walked over to the nearest major thoroughfare in both directions and it seemed fine. While it did indeed have its share of no-frills businesses, it also had a couple of cafes and restaurants, a couple of small law offices, real estate offices, and medical practices, a catering company that prepares and delivers dinners for busy working commuters (as advertised at the train station concierge), an old-fashioned toy store, one of two branches of Maplweood's library, one of Maplewood's parks, a couple of dance, pilates, and karate studios, and a small pharmacy. There are also plans to build a new police station there, as well as NJ's flagship Whole Foods store within short driving distance. Furthermore, we saw a proliferation of really nice, newly installed sidewalk benches and street paving. (There was a big sign saying that the department of Housing and Urban Development had provided a $150,000 grant to improve the streetscape in the area, and we were also aware that a local nonprofit was actively working to bring the area up. )

To get a broader range of input, I signed up for Maplewood Online's message boards and perused them extensively. Specifically, I did a search to see what people thought of that general neighborhood, and there were many threads about it. To sum up about 3.5 hours of research, it seemed the general consensus was that people who are not familiar with the neighborhood (especially people like us who are thinking of moving into town) are a little wary of it at first (and hence, newcomers post messages to the boards asking what people think of it), but that people who actually live there are almost uniformly pleased with it and love it. Just about all of them said it was perfectly safe, even with children. Most had never experienced any crime there at all. Ironically, one recent mugging (which was apparently a total fluke for the whole town) took place in a wealtheir area, right near the train station, as someone was walking home alone. Of those who did experience some form of crime, the worst they reported were having bikes, cars, or car headlinghts stolen, probably because their car wasn't kept in their garage and/or they also didn't use a Club -- apparently people feel so safe that they often keep their house and car doors unlocked, which may also be part of the problem (we would never do that!). One person said it was a little noisy during the summer because people's kids are playing in the backyards and the houses are close together, but as far as kids loitering in the street and being noisy, that tended to happen closer to the center of town. The other theme that kept coming up over and over again was what a friendly, tight-knit community it is -- enviable compared to other parts of Maplewood, apparently, as posted by someone who moved to a more posh area and subsequently somewhat regretted it. Apparently that neighborhood association is among the most active in town and everyone watches out for each other. What I read on the message boards also seemed to confirm our general impression that this particular area was the only part of Maplewood that consistently offered housing within our price range.

While all this was going on, I had called a few attorneys who had been recommended to us by various sources to see who might be the best fit in working with us. One of them who was local to Maplewood said it was her understanding that the area in question was steadily and clearly improving, and that it was attracting an artsy, creative element which had been alluded to in the online forums I'd read.

Towards the end of this past week, we returned to the house one more time so that I could walk the block or so from the jitney drop-off point to the house at night to see how it felt in terms of the lighting, and to get a visceral, personal sense of how safe it felt, independent of anything I'd read. It seemed okay to me.

So, the neighborhood really didn't appear to be an issue of concern on closer examination.

* Appearance of the property: Our realtor came up with a few creative ways to make the house and the grounds around it look a little more inviting: putting window boxes with flowers in the front, landscaping the front and back yards, putting rocking chairs on the porch, and repainting the outside of the house.

All of us were concerned about the potential problem created by a tree on the street side of the curb right in front of the property whose roots were pushing up a couple of slabs of sidewalk so that they buckled and cracked. Clearly this wouldn't be simple to resolve, regardless of who was financially responsible for it -- and simply leaving it alone would be a recipe for disaster from a liability standpoint. I made it my business to find out exactly what addressing it would entail. After a couple of phone calls, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself transferred to the person who was effectively the Top Tree Dude for the town through the Department of Public Works. He said that because the tree was on the street side of the curb, rather than on the house side, the town would be responsible for dealing with it (which was what the local lawyer I had spoken with suspected), but that the property owner (whether buyer or seller) would need to hire a mason to remove the impacted slabs of pavement and clear away the debris so that the root could be exposed. The town would take it from there, either grinding down the root or removing the whole tree if necessary (a new one would be planted in its place if that were the case), and then the mason would either recreate the slabs or restore the old ones to put back after the work was done, which he expected to take no more than three business days. To my delight, he kindly offered to go over to the property and personally inspect it so that he could determine what it would take to solve the problem, and promptly called me back. He thought they could just grind down the root rather than having to cut down/kill the tree, and that the slabs seemed sufficiently salvageable enough that they could be restored and put back rather than completely recreated. He estimated that a mason might charge a flat fee of $500. So, while additional expenses are never welcome, this was hardly catastrophic in the grand scheme of things. His willingness to go out of his way to be helpful on such short notice and with such quick turnaround time confirmed what we'd heard about the quality of Maplewood's community.

During our visit to measure the house, our realtor also showed us another place that had just come on the market similar to the one we were considering, except that it had three full bedrooms instead of two. She really talked it up, saying she liked it better than the original one. However, when we looked at it, we found that while it had some nice features, high-grade appliances, and an extra bedroom, the three bedrooms it had were noticeably smaller than any of the bedrooms in the other place, and probably took up the same amount of space combined as the other two. The basement ceiling and pipes were so low that my hubby bumped his head twice, and the basement stairs and back deck felt like they were cheaply constructed, tending to noticeably give under our feet. The kitchen was also smaller, and there was no stair access to the attic. The roof had visible drainage problems as the snow was melting, which the other didn't. We definitely weren't interested in pursuing that one any further. As usual, our realtor's judgement in what constituted "the best" house left something to be desired.

In between all these various interactions, we attended a seminar called "Home Buying for Hipsters," which was held at the charming Huckleberry Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The workshop was interesting because it was geared pretty much exclusively toward young, first-time homebuyers like us. A lot of it was review for us, and some of it wasn't relevant because it related to New York and to co-ops/condos, but there were a few little interesting tidbits that came up. One of them was that it's better to make a smaller down payment and keep more cash on-hand for reserves. For example, putting down 10% versus 5% makes very little difference in terms of lowering the monthly payments -- only about $100 -- and when I came home and checked with an online mortgage calculator to work it out using the top end of our price range as an example since it's a round number, it turned out that what they said was correct. The other points they made were that they recommend staying at the place you buy a *bare minimum* of five years to make it worth all the closing costs, etc. (we are planning on seven to ten), said that it's really, really important not to stretch yourself too much in making monthly payments because there are always unforseen circumstances that come up (which confirmed our feeling that since this place was comfortably within our range rather than a big stretch, we should go for it), and that pretty much anything in the NY area in decent condition would be a sound investment, regardless of how small the space, as long as it was well cared for. They also said that this is the best possible time to buy historically, and that it's important that the realtor you work with be acting in your best interests (which, unfortunately, we knew ours wasn't). Luckily things are easier for buyers in NJ than NY for a number of reasons.

So, armed with all these facts and applauded by both my parents for having done our due diligence, we felt confident we could make an offer. Figuring out how much to start with was not entirely straightforward. We were well aware that it was important to use comparable market analysis (i.e., final sales) figures from other similar houses that had recently sold in the area, but there was no data available since October because nothing in that area had reached final sale beyond then, though there were apparently several pending sales. Pre-October figures suggested that the asking price was quite reasonable, but then again, those sales reflected a healthier market than what we have now. So we asked our realtor to provide sales data for ANY houses in Maplewood, of any size, at any price, in any neighborhood, that had sold since October, so that we could calculate selling price as a percentage of asking price over time. We determined that for right now, that figure was 97%, or 3% lower, so we could set our offering price at 6% lower and then meet in the middle. From what the realtor was telling us, which may or may not be accurate, Maplewood is relatively well insulated against the downturn hitting the rest of the housing market because of its close proximity to New York -- and New York is virtually immune, since the demand for housing there is only growing and, in the immortal words of one of our Hipster seminar speakers, "you can't manufacture more dirt." (We didn't realize until later that we could have compared the post-October houses for which we had data to *each other* to see if there was any similarity between their basic stats, and then determine whether there was any decline across *selling prices only* over that brief time -- good to know for future reference.)

We realized that we might have had some room to make our offer a little lower, but our realtor had told us earlier that the seller had previously rejected a low offer (though it was illegal for the seller's agent to tell us what it was, so we didn't know the amount), and we wanted to make sure we were taken seriously -- especially since it didn't seem that they were being greedy in their asking price. So, we figured we'd err on the side of being fair rather than ultra-thrifty, and subsequently come up more slowly in price during the negotiations.

So, we signed on the dotted line, and held our breath. To our relief, our realtor didn't pressure us to put in a higher bid as we had suspected she might, given that she had initially advised us to make an offer more than 3.5% higher (thus confirming our suspicions that the price we ultimately offered was a fair one, and that we couldn't necessarily trust her advice). She also invited us to stick around while she contacted the seller's agent, and managed to reach her on the phone. She did a good job of packaging us as nice, conscientious, efficient, serious, and financially responsible buyers. She also told her that she thought we were offering "a very fair price," gave her the details of the contract (which doesn't become legally binding until an agreement is reached with the seller and then completes attorney review), and when she hung up, she reported back to us that the seller's agent hadn't scoffed at our offer, which was a good sign.

To decompress a bit immediately afterwards, my hubby and I dined in downtown Maplewood at a restaurant called Cent'Anni's, where we had a delightful meal in front of a fireplace (and noted it as a great spot for future Valentine's Day and/or anniversary dinners).

I had my hubby give our realtor his cell phone number so she could relay any news once she had it, since he was more reachable on his cell than I was (I get poor cell reception at work, and there's no privacy to talk at my desk on my work landline number), and she got in touch with him the next morning to fill him in on the seller's response -- a counter-offer.

Apparently what she said and what he heard were two totally different things. The figure to which the seller was willing to come down was encouraging (and clearly understood), but then something was said about responding to potential issues arising from the forthcoming inspection that my hubby interpreted as indicating the house would be sold in "as- is" condition, with the seller claiming no responsibility for any major financial issues that the inspection report might identify. After extensive discussion amongst ourselves, with my parents and his, and with a couple of my friends -- taking fully half the weekend -- we deemed those terms totally unacceptable, shady, bad business, and a deal-killing turn-off, since that's not how the property was originally advertised and we knew that some upfront cash would be required to address several minor things we'd seen already. What was the seller hiding? Why absolve himself of responsibility so early in the process? It had "fishy" written all over it. We successfully talked ourselves out of the whole thing and felt 100% confident in our decision to walk away with no further negotiation, having utterly lost interest in the house.

I worked up the nerve to convey our thoughts to our realtor on the phone as tactfully as possible, and found myself hyperventilating as I did so because of how stressful it tends to be for me to break bad news to someone -- anyone -- and potentially disappoint them (especially after all the work we had all put into this process), trying to control myself as well as I could.

Imagine my surprise when she told me what the seller had ACTUALLY said, which was that he didn't want to be nickel-and-dimed with small, trivial repairs that needed to be made as a result of the inspection (such as a faucet washer that needed to be replaced), but that he would be willing to address any larger, significant issues that came up -- exactly the opposite of what we had understood to be the case, and a perfectly reasonable response from the seller's end. So all of a sudden, it wasn't so easy to cast him as a skummo and keep on moving; our impression of him as a relatively reasonable guy had to be reinstated, fully intact. And we had to acknowledge that the deal was proceeding on perfectly fair terms.

So then the question became: did we want to proceed with the house after all? We had done such a great job of talking ourselves out of it! We became convinced that we had time on our side to find something better, great negotiating power as high-credit buyers, and a continually falling market to bring more appealing properties closer to our reach.

And then my mom suggested that we consider exploring Morristown, throwing yet another monkey wrench into the whole process, given that we had firmly decided on Maplewood long ago. But she made a very compelling case for the advantages it could offer us:

* While farther out from NYC, it would be close to other places within NJ offering strong job opportunities for both my hubby and me, and it has a considerable job market itself -- we had talked so much about wanting to eventually end our dependency on the city, so what better place to begin? Maplewood and the surrounding area offer little in the way of a local economy, supported almost entirely by NYC transplants still continuing to earn a living in the Big Apple.

* It offers local culture, as evidenced by a Joshua Bell concert my mom had just attended there the previous night, along with the shows of other significant, high-caliber performers she'd been to in the past.

* It's an area that both she and my dad know well, since they both work there.

* The residential areas are reportedly attractive (though whether they're affordable is something we'd need to explore further).

That was enough to convince us it was worth a further look. We remembered having eliminated Morristown early on in our weeding process of NJ locations, but couldn't remember exactly why. Perhaps because it was an hour by train to NYC instead of just half an hour, because the crime was slightly higher than Maplewood's, and because it wasn't an obviously economical choice. However, my hubby and I had agreed long ago that we would be willing to accept an hour-and-a-half door-to-door commute temporarily until we found jobs within NJ, a parameter within which this techincally fits, if only barely. We also found that the crime rate, while a little higher than Maplewood's, is still much lower than the "Best Places to Live" nationwide average by quite a bit -- and in some respects, even lower than that of the town where I grew up, which would be considered ultra-safe by any measure. And as for whether we might be able to afford it any better, we were encouraged that its median home price is about $100,000 less than Maplewood's, and that its median yearly property taxes are about $1,000 lower as well. In doing a cursory scan of the MLS listings within our price range, we were amazed to see just how much more house we could get (extra rooms and *far* bigger lots, all in so-called "move-in condition") compared to what was available in Maplewood at the same range. As my hubby said, "I'm starting to like Morristown more by the minute." Some additional strong arguments we found for considering it, based on our further research:

* Not only does it offer train access to NYC, but it is also within the routes of several NJ Transit bus lines, unlike Maplewood, whose bus service is extremely limited. So even if I couldn't find a job right in town, the opportunity would exist to work elsewhere nearby and still have a prayer of getting there via public transit -- not a small consideration.

* From what we could tell by looking at maps and Google Earth photos, the area is abundant with greenery -- trees (some of the houses we saw in our price range even included wooded lots) and parks (there are several...I think I recall something like seven). And the fact that the lots are generally bigger makes for a less built-up feel in the residential parts than many of the other places we'd investigated.

* It's where The Seeing Eye, a major guide dog training institute, is based, so there's likely to be some accommodation for the needs of people with visual impairments like me. There's even a local bus that goes around town and a special shuttle you can make arrangements with in advance to pick you up and drop you off where you need to go.

* It's surrounded by gourmet/organic grocery retailers -- a branch of Kings like Maplewood has, plus Whole Foods in nearby Madison and Trader Joe's in nearby Florham Park.

What's not to like??? We simply had to see it in person.

So, the question of the house on which we had made an offer suddenly became moot, for completely different reasons than what we had originally started with. We couldn't possibly move forward with it while bearing the new knowledge of potentially better opportunities on the horizon in some form or other.

The fact that sealed the house's doom for us was asking ourselves, "If we had no idea that this house was in a difficult-to-afford but highly desirable town, and we didn't feel any pressure to 'settle,' would we still want to commit to it and forsake all other houses?" The answer for both of us was "no." While it would have suited us just fine, which we had determined at great length, we probably wouldn't have given it a second look if we hadn't been so enamored of the idea of living Maplewood and establishing a toe-hold in that particular town. We loved Maplewood's unique Norman Rockwell charm and vibrant community spirit, but charm and spirit like that come with a very high price tag, especially when it's bolstered by New York incomes. Though a nicety, perhaps it's not strictly necessary for our purposes as long as the area where we ultimately live has an abundance of other positive qualities to recommend it.

My grandmother also made an interesting point when we went to visit her. She didn't know the specifics of what had transpired, but she had heard vague inklings of our activities from my mom and had gotten the distinct impression that we might be setting our sights too low. She reiterated that since the market is now on our side, we have a rare opportunity to buy something that might otherwise have been completely out of reach for us. She proposed making the extra effort to find the best possible house we could acquire now so that we could look back years later and smile about what a relative "steal" we got, hopefully making much higher incomes by that time which would make the struggle of the initial transition feel like a distant memory.

We'd been so focused on looking from the present to the future that we hadn't thought of what it would be like to look back *from* the future *to* the present as a defining moment in real estate history -- the biggest housing drop in 20 years! (We even found a Reuters article hammering home that point: http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN2632091220080226?sp=true) Literally once in our lifetimes thus far. A decade from now, could we truly feel good about having used this much-tauted buyer's market to get a place roughly the size of our *apartment*, in a poo-pooed (even if not justifiably so) part of town? There has to be a better alternative. Granted, we were pretty amazed that we were able to swing a decent house in Maplewood at all -- that was already a lot more than we had expected, as just the very fact of owning a house rather than an apartment had seemed like an elusive dream years off in the future only a few months ago, especially in a town as nice as Maplewood. The place we had found was technically move-in ready, not even a fixer-upper (except in the lightest sense). And it even had a giant deck and reasonably-sized yard!

What we also realized was that both of us are so accustomed to negotiating from a position of competition with zillions of others who are more advantaged in some way (the quintessential New York experience, not to mention other aspects of our earlier lives), and who act with cutthroat speed, that it has become second nature for both of us to adapt and make do with what's available, seizing what opportunities we can before they disappear. If life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, the early bird gets the worm, etc. This has certainly been a useful coping strategy which has served us well. But what if there's pre-made lemonade to be had, and a few more worms to go around than in the past, and it's just a matter of looking harder? Certainly that reward would be worth waiting for, since we definitely don't want our house to be a lemon. And technically speaking, there's no need to be out of our current apartment until the end of July. Perhaps some of the best listings are yet to come, with spring approaching and the housing market and interest rates continuing to go down.

So, it was just a matter of exiting gracefully.

We plan to call the realtor first thing tomorow morning to explain our situation in the most palatable way possible. Back to the drawing board! Live and learn, right?